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If you are looking to point a finger, I say blame Facebook and texting. There are so many options today to be social electronically, that quite frankly, even old school MMO's are inferior. You can blame devs all you want. New gamers look less and less to online games for interaction with other people. Can you blame them as well?

Sure, design can certainly change how players interact with each other within a game, but long gone are the days of welcoming communities. If a forward-thinking company wants to create community, like in the golden days of MMO's, they better be ready to throw out the old templates...and ready to sit down with Mark Zuckerberg's personal assistant.

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The majority of gamers out there are wallflowers, content with just watching other's use chat and seeing an occasional passerby. All it takes these days.

Do many people do much more than talk to and hang out with immediate friends at a bar, club, amusement park, casino, etc?

You're looking for people to sudden act differently in an MMO than in any other social setting comprised of mixed company, which is a rather unreasonable expectation.

you speak with your bartender who will get you your drinks, and maybe have a discussion about the drink if its not to busy. (buying food/drinks from a crafter player).you also have the stripper which you tip for an enjoyable night, and perhaps in some states/provinces is legal to bring home afterwards. you have the cap driver who will drive you home, another player/player interactions. (smugglers/pilots), then you also have the police officer who will stop your friend because he went and drove home while drunk. law enforcement etc.... i can keep going if you want.

in your daily lives you have interactions everywhere. now remove the NPCs and make em other players (classes/professions) and you have world. have a pure crafter class, have a combatant class for the militia, have a rogue smuggler class that will steal and kill etc... possibilities are ennormous. just switch the NPCs for players

the reason why this is not succeeding is simply because people want it NOW!!

the insane people are those who will run the same raid every day for months the same daily quest. i dont want a game, i want a world.

the difinition of an MMORPG contains the criterion : persistant WORLD, and not persistant game.

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"How can we stop it?"

By accepting that some people have preferences or reasons for playing solo, and focusing on making sure that even solo play involves interacting with other people. Focus on a rich player-driven economy. Focus on solo players' actions having an effect on the world that affects other solo players (resource depletion, mob migration, open world player housing, etc.)

Seriously, you'll just end up like King Canute yelling at the sea if you tell people they must group up. The only group they'll join is the group of people leaving your game. You need to expand your mind and realize that interacting with other players in a virtual world can mean many different things beyond grouping with them or ganking them.

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Im not assuming anything, SWTOR attempted to copy the WOW pattern, its well documented. Im not talking about solo v grouping at all, thats just a facet of mmorgs.

Eh...well uh...solo vs grouping is kinda the discussion at hand, guy.

Nobody's disputing TOR mimicked most of the WOW pattern. I was only pointing out that the reason that flopped is they failed to adequately copy the pattern.

You could also add that despite "flopping" it is one of the more successful mmo's in terms of market share. On top of that if they had managed to keep it's bloated budget down it would have been a sweeping success.

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Originally posted by Banquetto

"How can we stop it?"

By accepting that some people have preferences or reasons for playing solo, and focusing on making sure that even solo play involves interacting with other people. Focus on a rich player-driven economy. Focus on solo players' actions having an effect on the world that affects other solo players (resource depletion, mob migration, open world player housing, etc.)

Seriously, you'll just end up like King Canute yelling at the sea if you tell people they must group up. The only group they'll join is the group of people leaving your game. You need to expand your mind and realize that interacting with other players in a virtual world can mean many different things beyond grouping with them or ganking them.

Very true, that. As I've said earlier: I really like MMORPGs for their features, and 'grouping for content' is just one of the many things one can only find in an MMORPG.

I'm in and by myself a lone wolf, inside the game and outside. But I do enjoy a world that is not only populated by automata. Where I have a persistent world, where encounters are dynamic (meaning that there's always the chance another players is in 'my' area), where there are social interactions apart from "lf1m heal for X". I enjoy helping people out with my knowledge of the game world.

But I HATE grouping. I like to discover and do things in my own pace, not feeling constantly pressured to not hold my group members back by being slow. I also hate it when there's nothing I can spontaneously do because I would need a group for it.

And I hope to all Gods, demi-gods and whathaveyou that that ancient dinosaur of "what can we do to force people to play together" dies a quick death. It's being reanimated long beyond its life cycle. Yeah, maybe I'm not a 'real' MMORPG player, but considering what a 'real' MMORPG player looks like, I'm freaking glad I am not. "Oh, only threehundred more Wargs until I get a 0.1% increase to my to hit chance against beasts!"

By the way, TSW features 'Lair' areas in every zone. They're home to very powerful monsters that cannot be taken on alone. I'm totally okay with that because they're not needed for my progress through the story. They're there for people who enjoy grouping up, and defeating world bosses.

To conclude, here's a nice article about why even solo players like playing MMORPGs: http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/06/05/the-soapbox-why-solo-players-dont-just-play-a-single-player-ga/

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There isn't much to stop. The target audience for big MMOs has changed.

What you can change is your expectations.

If you like a niche MMO setup (be it FFAPvP, a sandbox, forced grouping, all mobs are rabbits, whatever), you have to accept that it will most likely not be AAA quality.

Devs won't sink 30+ mil. into a niche MMO. They will always aim for the masses in order to make the most profit.

So either we start accepting a bit lower quality for our niche MMOs and hope that with more of us putting our wallets where are mouths are quality of upcoming games is going to increase or there is not much point in complaining that we don't get what we want.

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honestly i use to agree with playing with others should be a main factor in MMOs. but anymore i dont think i want to play with the communities in these games. i mean dont you see what goes on in global chats? do YOU want to be forced to group with those people?

it seems like most of the people i run into anymore in these games are the " r u mad bro " fools who spend more time trying as hard as they can to put others down than they do actually playing the game. i dont want to group with those people.

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I think we all know that though.The problem is, devs don't. They're not making ORPGs. The games are multiplayer by concept, but there's no reason for the other players to be there.

There's people running around with you, but they might as well be AI.

They don't impact you at all, except for maybe the marketplace or the global chat.

What's everyone's opinion on this?

How can we stop it?

although i agree with you

i would like to add 2 thins

1. In any MMORPG you SHOULD NEVER be self sufficient. you need to interact with others. grouping is a must to achieve things. solo play should be available but only as a "super hard mode" and should not give better rewards than when you do something with a group. now some might say, its hard to find PUGs, you dont always have time to do something and people quit all the time. i say, its the game that is not properly made. for one, its hard to find decent PUGs because everyone is going solo since its more rewarding. but i can assure you that if EVERYONE required to group to do missions, you would have EVERYONE looking for groups. adding a game mechanic that would allow to Identify good players from grieffers. (one thing would be a kill/death ratio. another can be guild history with timestamps. achievements saying what you have completed etc.

2. player economy. this will force interaction. and force people to actually talk with their crafters or ressource suppliers.

now the excuses are that you dont always have time to look for crafters or vendors that you just want to log in play a bit and log out.

buy skyrim and play a single player game. you dont register to a football (soccer, futbol) league and whine that you cant use your hands. they will simply tell you to go play handball or basketball.

but if i look at the other side of the medal, people are willing to pay a subscription to play single player games online?

as an investor and company i see 1,000,000 subscribers who want a single player online game and 300,000 who want a real MMORPG. the decision is easy. all my money goes to the development of the single player online game. i played UO > SWG > EvE > and if no one is online to do anything i load up skyrim or ME3 or any other single player game if i feel like PVE or TF2 or Tribes when i feel like PvP i dont go out complaining that i cant play solo in a game made for multiplayer, the same i dont complain that i cant touch the ball with my hands in futbol a game made to be played with your feet.

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Originally posted by DrunkWolfhonestly i use to agree with playing with others should be a main factor in MMOs. but anymore i don't think i want to play with the communities in these games. i mean don't you see what goes on in global chats? do YOU want to be forced to group with those people?

it seems like most of the people i run into anymore in these games are the " r u mad bro " fools who spend more time trying as hard as they can to put others down than they do actually playing the game. i don't want to group with those people.

The thing with this is communities develop as developers allow them to- when games allow progression with little to no dependence on other players then all players can be like you described with no repercussion.

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Lets be honest here, everytime I read threads like these do you know why I usually laugh a little? Because if you were to design a game based on forum opinion a few things are gonna happen.

1. they are gonna complain that is not what they wanted even if it was designed as requested. Lets be honest, coming up with ideas is ez, implementing them is hard.

2. Games designed based on market research tend to be dumb down as fuck, people complain why games are the way they are? is because they decided to listen to people like you...the only difference is that the people complaining here are mad because they did not ask them.

3. If you were to design a game based on forum feedback EVERY game will end up being the same.

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Lets be honest here, everytime I read threads like these do you know why I usually laugh a little? Because if you were to design a game based on forum opinion a few things are gonna happen.

1. they are gonna complain that is not what they wanted even if it was designed as requested. Lets be honest, coming up with ideas is ez, implementing them is hard.

2. Games designed based on market research tend to be dumb down as fuck, people complain why games are the way they are? is because they decided to listen to people like you...the only difference is that the people complaining here are mad because they did not ask them.

3. If you were to design a game based on forum feedback EVERY game will end up being the same.

+1

If the majority of people on these forums had a significant impact on how MMOs were being made, I'd probably stop playing MMOs altogether until that changed. The truth is that most people make for HORRIBLE game designers. One of the most frustrating things about design, is it takes years to learn how to really get good at it, and yet any idiot on the street thinks they can do it better than people who have dedicated their lives to it.

Every good designer, with experience, has at least 10,000 decent / good / great ideas that haven't made it into their games. Just because something sounds good on paper does not mean it will work well in a game environment. There are always sacrifices that need to be made. Some decisions will have to get scrapped for the good of the whole, even if they were really interesting ideas. A good designer knows this.

I'd seriously like to see some of these people trying to backseat design an MMO actually try and make a game themselves. Doesn't have to be an MMO, just any original game. The experience I'm sure would be an eye opener for those that actually tried it. And if you can't make a simple game, you certainly can't make an MMO.

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Originally posted by Truelevel2. Unless the A.I gets a massive overhaul, you plus 5 A.I pets = full group of 6... defeating A.I doesnt require much thinking or planning

Any hard mode raider will disagree with you.

I invite you to PUG a hard mode raid with zero thinking and planning and see how you will do.

Well, obviously if you give solo players A.I. companions that have stats as powerful as hardmode raid bosses, that would be a different matter. I think Truelevel is talking about A.I. companions on par with a player character, for stat power.